A rubber products supplier placed 500 workers on a formal unpaid leave program in the second half of last month, boosting the total number of furloughed workers in the nation to 7,736 as of the end of the month, up 448 from the first half, the Ministry of Labor said yesterday.
The company, which recently put about 200 employees on furlough, placed an additional 500 employees on its unpaid leave program in the second half of last month as orders fell, Labor Conditions and Equal Employment Division section chief Wu Lieh-yen (吳烈炎) said.
Some manufacturers ended their furlough programs in the second half of last month, including bicycle and component makers, returning more than 200 workers to production lines, Wu said.
Photo: CNA
However, the export-oriented manufacturing sector in general is still feeling the pinch from weak global demand, with the number of furloughed workers rising from 6,687 on March 15 to 7,117 on Sunday, he said.
Meanwhile, the service sector, including retailers and wholesale businesses, continued to report relatively stable employment amid solid domestic consumption in the post-COVID-19 era, the ministry said.
The number of furloughed workers in the two industries increased to 511 on Sunday from 493 on March 15, it said.
The number of furloughed workers in the lodging and food and beverage industry stood at six as of Sunday, up from four on March 15, while that in the support service industry, which is composed of travel agencies, fell from 38 to 37, it said.
Judging from the job market in the first quarter of this year, employment showed signs of stabilizing from the end of last year, when the number of furloughed workers stood at 9,764, the ministry said.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS